Lexa's first kill prompt
by CaelumBlack1987
Summary: This is a prompt about Lexa's first kill and it also basically tells why Clarke is still alive when they first meet.


LEXA'S FIRST KILL

She had been roaming the earth for thirteen summers only when she made her first kill. It had not been planned but it had been inevitable in her preparation to become a warrior. She remembered how it felt, having to slice a man's throat, she could still feel the blood gush down her hands, hear him struggle for breath, gurgling sounds the only thing that escaped his mouth. She recalled the man's eyes, turning from dark grey to black, the look in his eyes turning from surprise to undulated terror. She remembered all of is along with the sound his body made when falling to the ground with a bone-breaking thud. She could still see the way his blood soaked the ground and the metallic smell of blood that dominated the air. She recollected how the first time she had taken someone's life had given her nightmares for months after.

She had known when she had first spotted the man from the Ice Nation, nearly soundlessly making his way through the forest in the near-darkness of dawn, that it was going to be him or her and that there was no way back. She had been out hunting with a couple of other warriors when she had followed a trail of tracks that turned out to belong to the invader. He was obviously a scout, which she recognized because of the way his face showed no sign of the white face paint that was distinctive for the warriors of ice. The white face paint was their way of blending in within their surroundings up north. When they were not surrounded by ice and snow though, it made them stand out like a fish on land.

She had seen the ice warriors fight, their expressions grim and fierce, their faces chalky white, their clothes shades of white and grey. She had seen them move through the forests around her village, like ghosts, spirits in the flesh, bound to their promise to take revenge on their sworn enemies, those clans who had aligned themselves. They killed everyone they could, warriors, children, the elderly. One of them had killed the mother of her father on a warm spring day not too long ago, she had been hacked apart, her head cut off. She had found the body had been found a day after, she had been the one who had to chase away the many animals that tried to get a piece of her. It had been hard to recognize the person lying on the ground, clothes ripped, flesh torn from bones but she there had been no doubt in her mind as to who the person lying on the ground in front of her was. She knew the ring with the black stone that contained stars, that the person on the ground still wore on the middle finger of her right hand, she had seen it many times, tried it on many times as she grew from a young girl into a fearless warrior.

She had been thirteen summers only when she first thirsted for revenge, needed to feel the heartbeat that belonged to the murdered of her grandmamma, slow down and fade until it no longer existed. She craved seeing the life in his eyes fade until it winked out of existence as she knelt down next to the body that had once belonged to a woman she loved dearly, the woman who had brought her up, taught her many things. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks as she took the ring and put it around her thumb, she promised that she would keep it safe, spoke it out loud to the trees and the animals around her, to the sky and the sun, before kissing the stars as a final vow.

She spoke the words "Gonplei ste odon", their traditional way of saying goodbye to their warriors. In their tribe everyone was a warrior because once a warrior always a warrior, no matter your age or inability to fight due to injuries.

It had taken her five full moons before she could extract her revenge on one of the Ice Nation warriors but it had been worth it as she moved through the trees without sound, following the man who moved cautiously and carefully from shadow to shadow. She had used the element of surprise to her advantage, careful not to let out a battle scream, no matter how much she wanted to announce his impending death.

She had stalked her kill for about an hour before she attacked, before she ran out from the cover of darkness and jumped on his back and slid his throat messily, blood splashing everywhere, on her hands, her clothes, even her face as she pulled back his head accidently, sliding the knife in too deep because she killed out of uncontrolled anger that had been building for five full moons.

She remembered standing there, hovering above the first man she had ever killed and had expected to feel many things, pride, relief, satisfaction but she felt nothing of the sort. She felt strange upon realizing that she now was a true warrior like her father, like her mother, like their mothers and fathers were or had been. There was this thickness in her throat that made it difficult to breathe, a heaviness pressing down on her chest and her legs felt like they had turned to stone as she made her way back to camp, careful not to wash away the blood that proved she was now truly a woman, a warrior who would stop at nothing to protect her clan.

Later that night, after receiving her first kill-mark, her mother told her that the first kill was always the worst because it split the soul in half and that hurt more than any physical pain. The second kill would be easier but it would still hurt and the third would be easier still until the fourth would be bearable and the fifth tolerable. It would take time but she would learn to accept that taking lives was a way of living, it was their way of staying alive. In times of war there was only one rule to live by and that was kill or be killed. It turned out her mother had been right that it no longer hurt as much from the inside after her fifth kill but the nightmares had never truly stopped.

Those had been a different times, a time where she had not yet been the Commander, a time where she had not felt the continuous responsibility of keeping her people safe day after day, back then, that responsibility had not yet weighed heavily upon her shoulders and she had felt lighter then. All those years ago she had just been Lexa, a promising warrior still in training, skilled with the sword from a young age. Looking back she could not recall the time where she did not train, all she remembered was sparring, attacking, defending, broken bones and flesh wounds while she learned more about dancing with death every single day as she grew both physically and mentally.

All she had wanted was to become a great warrior, protector of her people, fighter for justice or revenge. It had all been only relative until that first kill, taking that man's live had changed everything for her.

She had always known she was different from the other girls in the village where she grew up, though they were being prepared to become warriors, just like her, their minds wandered further than training sessions and becoming legend. Unlike them, Lexa cared not for the boys and girls like the others her age seemed to do much. Her sole focus was to become as great a fighter as her father, as skilled a tracker like her mother, to become a legend like her great grandfather, to have her name known among all the clans in the alliance. She explored the lands around her village, found places no one ever had seen before, she travelled with her father from village to villages, from the far mountains to the sea, she saw Polis, their capital city, with her own eyes when she was only fourteen summers.

She had been an explorer of the world, a killer of Ice men and slowly people all around had learned her name whispered around fires. She had wanted her enemy to know of her ways with the sword, she needed them to fear the thought of having to face her in battle, just like they feared her father and his father before him, she wished for her reputation to proceed her. She had longed to become a legend among her people, to make them proud. She had succeeded in that even before she had become the Commander of her people. Looking back to her ambitions and goals as a child she felt the need to smile at the knowledge of exceeding those dreams but stopped herself from doing so. This was not the time to smile. She looked back to the reason memories of her first kill had come to mind. She sat on her throne and contemplated killing the blonde in front of her, the woman who had fallen from the sky and killed three hundred of her warriors. She had been the one to tell them to attack the invaders from the stars and it had supposed to be an easy kill for them, just around eighty or ninety children against her three-hundred skilled warriors, her warriors, those with a reputation not unlike hers. The sky people should have been slaughtered.

She gazed upon the woman in front of her, for despite her young age, she could not call her a child like most of her people. She had taken several lives so she no longer was a child. Lexa kept her expression icy and detached without effort but she was intrigued by the woman she had underestimated. She found herself being fascinated by the shade of blonde that was the colour of her hair, the blue eyes that contained so much emotion that it nearly overwhelmed her to look into them. But despite her seemingly innocent exterior, a warrior soul resided in this one and she was definitely not to be underestimated.

This one's reputation, not unlike herself only a few years ago, proceeded her and she needed to thread carefully around her for she was devious, she was smart and ruthless but at the same time there was so much more to her than all that, there was a spark in her eyes, a spark of life, of passion, of love, that she herself no longer possessed.

It was that spark that was the reason she had not yet killed her like she should have done the moment they had crashed down on earth and she was fascinated by it.


End file.
